The Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) will open the region’s largest kidney and transplant facility — the SPMC Kidney and Transplant Institute (SKTI) — on November 28, a nephrologist announced Monday.
Dr. Ma. Theresa Bad-ang, head of the SPMC–Human Advocate and Retrieval Effort (SHARE), said the four-story institute will feature a 62-bed capacity, four operating rooms, and a 100-bed dialysis center. It also includes charity wards, private rooms, and suites, and will house Mindanao’s first immunology laboratory.
“We no longer need to send specimens to Manila for tissue typing. We’ll have the capability here,” Bad-ang told the Philippine News Agency.
Situated beside SPMC’s heart center, the new institute is designated as the advanced care center for kidney health in Mindanao under the Universal Health Care program. It will also offer accessible kidney care packages for patients.
Bad-ang said the SKTI will help ease the hospital’s dialysis load, as SPMC currently serves around 200 patients. Across the region, about 3,000 individuals are undergoing dialysis — up from 2,400 last year.
“The rise is partly due to the availability of free packages that cover dialysis costs,” she said. “It’s not necessarily good news because it shows complications are rising. We need to focus more on prevention.”
She also emphasized the need for stronger public awareness on organ donation, noting that family refusal remains a major barrier to successful transplant programs.
“We will keep intensifying our efforts to educate the public on the value of organ donation,” Bad-ang said, adding that many families still withhold consent for organ retrieval from patients with irreversible brain damage.